About me

Chad Heilig, PhD • ORCID • Zotero • LinkedIn • GitHub

I lead Phronimon LLC and currently serve as an adjunct professor in Meharry Medical College’s School of Global Health, where I taught Biostatistics and Health Equity in Spring 2026.

I recently completed 25 years as a civil servant at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where I applied my doctoral degree in statistics and extended my contributions into philosophy, research ethics, data science, and mentoring. I worked initially on studies involving women with or at risk of HIV, spent 3 years overseeing CDC’s human research protections program, and returned to the methodology and ethics of clinical trials in tuberculosis (TB). I branched out to support or lead novel methods to improve finding cases of TB among persons living with HIV and to advance use of laboratory diagnostics among children living with HIV. As CDC’s first Associate Director for Data Science, I worked to assure scientific quality and analytic rigor in the application of machine learning to public health and championed the use of analytic methods in CDC’s experiential learning programs.

Throughout my 25 years as a federal employee, I mentored, coached, and advised early-career professionals at CDC in working with data and analytic methods. Dozens of learners spanned a variety of backgrounds through several different CDC programs, as well as doctoral, masters, undergraduate, and high school level students. My career inspired me to write an essay on a culture for doing good things with data in public health.

I have previously co-taught a graduate/undergraduate seminar on ethics and epistemology in clinical trials, taught introductory biostatistics to Masters of Public Health students, and delivered dozens of guest lectures and seminars at CDC, colleges, and universities.